I mentioned Universal’s new “Classic Monsters” Blu-ray collection a couple of weeks ago in connection with that eight-disc set’s most prominent extra, the 3-D version of “Creature From the Black Lagoon.” But the collection is worth returning to for this Halloween week, not because these movies need any real introduction — with one exception, which I’ll get to below, these are among the most loved and frequently reissued films of classical Hollywood — but because Universal and its subcontractors have done an extraordinary job of bringing the material back to life, in editions remarkably superior to anything that has been available on home video before.

The great paradox of film preservation is that the most famous movies are frequently those most in need of major repair. Over the years camera negatives (and the other forms of pre-print material) become worn out through overuse, suffering a little more damage every time they’re used to make new copies for theatrical rereleases, television sales or the newest form of home viewing technology. In many cases, particularly involving films of the 1930s and earlier, first-generation material no longer exists (the negatives of “King Kong” and “Citizen Kane,” for example, were both lost in a fire), and the movies survive only in copies many generations removed from the original.

Universal has kept its monsters working hard over the years, so it’s no wonder that, even as recently as “The Legacy Collection” that the studio released to DVD in 2004, some of the old boys were looking pretty tired out. Of this group — which includes “Dracula” (1931), “Frankenstein” (1931), “The Mummy” (1932), “The Invisible Man” (1933), “The Bride of Frankenstein” (1935), “The Wolf Man” (1941), “The Phantom of the Opera” (1943) and “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (1954) — I recall “Dracula” being in the most problematic condition. A 2006 “75th Anniversary Edition” seemed only to exaggerate the flaws of earlier versions, with a flat, overbright image and a soundtrack so overpowered by background hiss that it seemed as if someone were frying bacon just off camera.

So it’s good to report that, while all of the titles in the set have received a significant bump-up in quality, “Dracula” seems to have benefited most of all. The original negative having fallen apart in the 1940s, Universal has returned to a first-generation, fine grain print in the collection of the Library of Congress and given it a thorough digital going over to remove dirt, scratches and tears while preserving a sharp, tight grain structure.

The soundtrack too has been carefully scrubbed, and for the first time in generations the film’s many silent moments (like many early talkies, “Dracula” has no musical underscore) are actually silent — or rather, preserve just enough noise to retain the tone of the original optical sound. Remarkably Universal has given the same high-grade treatment to the Spanish-language version of “Dracula,” which was filmed on the same sets at night with a cast of Latin American performers, and is included here among the extensive supplementary material.

The one ringer in the “Classic Monsters” collection is “The Phantom of the Opera” — which is not the celebrated 1925 version starring Lon Chaney (that one has fallen into the public domain), but a Technicolor remake from 1943. Directed by Arthur Lubin, the film is less a horror movie than a musical showcase for the baritone Nelson Eddy (whom Universal had recently acquired from MGM) and the rising star Susanna Foster. Claude Rains, who plays the Phantom, is billed third, which accurately represents his prominence in the picture. And yet for fans of the magnificent medium that was 1940s Technicolor the “Phantom” disc is a thrill, offering a vivid but not artificially enhanced representation of the astonishing range of tones produced by the process, which required the exposure of three separate strips of film.

To pause the disc on a randomly selected close-up is to reveal the astounding degree of skill and labor required (on the part of the cinematographers W. Howard Greene and Hal Mohr, the art directors Alexander Golitzen and John B. Goodman, the costume designer Vera West, the makeup artist Jack Pierce, and their many uncredited assistants) to produce an image of such subtle gradation and luminescence. I hope that Universal is able to do an equally fine job on the preservation and restoration of the recently rediscovered first-generation Technicolor print of the 1930 musical revue “King of Jazz” — a fitting climax to the major restoration effort the studio has undertaken for its 100th anniversary.

Halloween, of course, always brings a number of venerated (and not so venerated) horror films back into the market, and this year’s selection covers the full range of the genre. At one extreme there is Roman Polanski’s deceptively sleek, evenhanded adaptation of “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), which arrives in a finely restored, fully loaded edition from the Criterion Collection. (Among the copious extras is a feature-length documentary on Krzysztof Komeda, the jazz musician who composed the film’s score.) Following the tradition founded by Val Lewton in his 1940s horror films Mr. Polanski shows nothing and suggests everything. His direction seems to assume that the viewer has already read Ira Levin’s best-selling novel and knows everything that is happening off screen, just beyond the perception of the victimized heroine (played with reedlike frailty by Mia Farrow).

At the other end of the spectrum Shout! Factory is offering two sterling examples of the highly explicit horror films that emerged in the 1980s. Roger Spottiswoode’s 1980 “Terror Train” is an entertainingly contrived affair that gets the era’s reigning scream queen, Jamie Lee Curtis, aboard a runaway train filled with costumed New Year’s Eve revelers, one of whom is a psychopathic killer.

Far more personal (if less skillfully directed) than “Terror Train,” Tobe Hooper’s 1981 movie “The Funhouse” develops the themes of his notorious 1974 “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” with another tale of scrubbed suburban teenagers who find themselves trapped in a lumpenproletariat underworld defined by inbreeding and deformity — in this case, a carnival funhouse whose attractions include at least one genuine monster. The low-budget film doesn’t have the resources to develop a compelling atmosphere to contextualize its grisly effects, but Kevin Conway creates a memorably unsavory impression in his multiple roles, and Mr. Hooper makes use of a deep understanding of middle-class guilt and adolescent sexual anxiety. (“Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection,” Universal, Blu-ray $159.98, not rated; “Rosemary’s Baby,” the Criterion Collection, Blu-ray $39.95, DVD $29.95, R; “Terror Train” and “The Funhouse,” Shout! Factory, Blu-ray/DVD combo, $29.93 each, both films are rated R)

ALSO OUT THIS WEEK

MAGIC MIKE Channing Tatum stars as a male stripper who wants to get on in life in Steven Soderbergh’s sleeper hit. With Matthew McConaughey, Olivia Munn and Alex Pettyfer. Mr. Soderbergh “has a genius for wrapping tricky ideas, like capitalism and its discontents, into commercial packages,” Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times in June.(Warner Home Video, Blu-ray/DVD combo $35.99, DVD $28.98, R)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER Benjamin Walker (Broadway’s “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”) stars as a young Midwestern lawyer who finds that splitting rails is good preparation for driving stakes. With Rufus Sewell and Mary Elizabeth Winstead; Timur Bekmambetov (“Night Watch”) directed. “ ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ is such a smashing title it’s too bad someone had to spoil things by making a movie to go with it,” Ms. Dargis wrote in The Times in June. (Fox, Blu-ray 3-D/Blu-ray/DVD combo $49.99, Blu-ray/DVD combo $39.99, DVD $29.98, also available through Movies on Demand, R)

THE CAMPAIGN Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis as rival Congressional candidates in a comedy directed by Jay Roach. With Jason Sudeikis, Dylan McDermott and John Lithgow. The movie “is a fun-house fable that both exaggerates and understates the absurdities of our democracy in this contentious election year,” A. O. Scott wrote in The Times in August.(Warner Home Video, Blu-ray/DVD combo $35.99, DVD $28.98, also available through Movies on Demand, R)

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT This 1962 adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical play remains one of the director Sidney Lumet’s best films, with something of a definitive cast — Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, Dean Stockwell — and source material that justifies Lumet’s taste for showy theatrics. “A little less of Miss Hepburn would help the film,” Bosley Crowther wrote in The Times in 1962. (Olive Films, Blu-ray $29.95, DVD $24.95, not rated)

FEAR AND DESIRE Stanley Kubrick’s first feature (1953) is a young man’s movie, full of grand ambition — it’s an antiwar fable centered on four soldiers making their way back to base after a plane crash — but marred by poor writing and a ponderous tone. Kubrick completists will still want to own this disc, which is derived from a camera negative at the Library of Congress and restores the luster of Kubrick’s black-and-white cinematography. (Kino International, Blu-ray $34.95, DVD $29.95, not rated)

A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2012, on page AR15 of the New York edition with the headline: Restoring Horror To a Grisly Luster. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe